Other sports don't get a mention

Author: MikeFranchetti

Towards the end of the Dubai Tour – as I made yet another ‘Where’s Wally?’ joke – I began to wonder precisely how much I liked Marcel Kittel. I’m a big Mark Cavendish fan and the fan club rules say I’m not allowed to like Kittel. Riding for Giant, Kittel arrived on the frontline and kicked the Manxman off his throne with a succession of easy sprint wins. Cavendish fought a losing battle in his time with Quick-Step but the rivalry kept him hungry. Moving to Dimension Data, Cav responded by taking four brilliant stages of the 2016 Tour de France. They were great rivals and I needed to pick a side; it was always going to be Cavendish.

There are a whopping 37 events on the World Tour calendar and I’ve decided to rank them all because that’s how much I enjoy making lists. There’s plenty to laugh at in some recent additions to the World Tour and plenty of great races at lower levels. Nevertheless, these remain the strongest group of races in pro cycling. Disagree with my top ten? Let me know.

There are three races each year which are a little grander than all the rest. The Giro, Tour and Vuelta are responsible for many of our favourite moments and the great stages have been documented countless times. Nevertheless, it’s unrealistic to expect every stage to capture the imagination and even the most ardent fans won’t be able to recall every winner from the last decade. Here are five current pros you probably forgot took success on the big stage; cycling’s very own one-hit wonders.

A few years ago I decided I was going to have a crack at the full cycling calendar. This isn’t to say I wasn’t already a pro cycling super-fan, but it meant making a transition away from UCI flagship events and towards Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah. Unfortauntely, Dubai suffers from being very dull in terms of cycling parcours and everything about the race screams ‘bunch sprint’. Nevertheless, here are five potentially exciting things that could happen at this week’s Dubai Tour.

Much like the probably harmless flu-like symptoms you woke up with on Saturday, it’s never a great idea to Google a cyclist that you’ve never heard of. If you’re lucky, you’ll end up with a handful of race reports that probably need translating to your native language. However, if you’re careless, you’ll find yourself staring at an old profile that prints a few random race results, wildly guesses a birth date, and attaches photo of a completely different rider. Things always end badly and you’ll annoy your only cycling friend by talking casually about the prologue of the Tour of Al Zubarah. Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist Googling Vuelta San Juan superstar Gonzalo Najar, so you don’t have to.

As Just Pro Cycling enters its fourth year, there are certain things I can’t bring myself to write about anymore. The cycling season throws up a few predictable outcomes every year: Alejandro Valverde will reign over the Mur de Huy, Peter Sagan will pile up stage wins and the Vuelta will have a ridiculous amount of summit finishes. I also have several personal favourite topics which I feel I’ve squeezed all that’s worth saying from over the last few years. Here are eight things I won’t be writing about in 2018.

To misquote Frank Sinatra, it was not a very good year for some of cycling’s biggest names. This wasn’t necessarily their fault and – unfortunately – our favourite riders are only ever one moto/pothole/idiot with a flag away from having their big races ruined. Nevertheless, when you fail to meet your targets (especially when it’s a well-documented Giro/Tour double, spoiler alert, Nairo Quintana’s on this list) you’re going to want to forget the season as soon as possible. Here are my five losers of 2017.